


with your face towards the sky

by cylencia



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Can also be read as gen, Copious Use of Metaphors and Similes, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, Introspection, M/M, POV Second Person, Relationship Study, They're Vague but Very Much There
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cylencia/pseuds/cylencia
Summary: When you turn your back to him, all you feel is resignation tinged with flecks of resentment because even if it was just for a split second, you saw thelookin his eyes just before he hit that ball. Fire, passion, hunger, an almost superhuman drive to win, win,win,all burning behind the copper in his eyes with all the intensity of a supernova and—Tch. What a waste. It makes youfurious.Alternatively, this is the story of Hinata Shouyou and Kageyama Tobio, as told through a series of firsts.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	with your face towards the sky

The first time you see him, you think he looks like a sunflower. Fresh and dew dusted in the morning and so completely in love with the sunlight kissing his face, unaware of just how badly it could burn him. 

“I’m going to win this match,” he says to you, hands shaking and cheeks flushed, “and the one after this and after that, all the way to nationals.”

He looks so serious while saying it that it almost makes you laugh, and you would have too had it not been for the unshakeable heaviness you're feeling in your stomach, like metal chains snaking their way up your legs, making sure that the tyrant king of th— 

Nevermind, nevermind. You don't have time for this. Or for fresh-faced and over-eager balls of energy and naivety, for that matter. Your stage is going to be something much grander.

Even so, he is so fiery and unwavering and so… ridiculously determined that the fact that he’s _short_ doesn’t even register to you until you're well into the first set.

The first time you see him jump, it steals the breath right out of your lungs. You feel him coming before you see him, the fiery hair and even fierier eyes dissolving into a blur of orange and green from the corner of your eye and for a split second, you forget all about the ball. You who’s known nothing but that ball ever since you were a child, you who has never let it out of sight on the court even for a second, you who knows that ball and all its intricacies better than you know your own hands, you forget to look at that ball because he steals it away from right in front of your eyes.

For a few seconds, you’re so transfixed that you can’t even find it in yourself to be angry because _holy shit, he looks like he’s flying_ and you’re sure you’ve never seen anything quite as mesmerising in your entire life. 

Right then, you revoke your earlier impression. This boy isn't a sunflower, far from it. No ground can ever hold him down in place. If anything, he’s a bird, wings spread out, trying to soar up into a sky that wasn't made for him at all.

He hits the ball, it gets stuffed right back down. 

When you turn your back to him, all you feel is resignation tinged with flecks of resentment because even if it was just for a split second, you _saw_ the look in his eyes just before he hit that ball. Fire, passion, hunger, an almost superhuman drive to win, win, _win_ , all burning behind the copper in his eyes with all the intensity of a supernova and—

Tch. What a waste. It makes you _furious_.

_"What have you been doing for the past three years?_

The first time you make a set to him, your hands are shaking. You didn’t _want_ to make that set, not really, but there’s just something about this boy, something that makes your hands move on their own and makes you want to walk through fire and water and full-out hurricanes just to deliver the ball to him. You don’t make that first set to him, he _takes_ it from you.

The fact drives you up the fucking wall. You hate it. You hate _him_.

And yet, when you make one of your terrifying pin-point sets to him, a cold metal vice closing around your heart and he hits it, then and only then do you find it in yourself to breathe again.

_“You’re a tyrant king, a dictator.”_

_“We’ve had enough of you.”_

Voices, so many, so many, _so many_ of them behind you, in front of you, talking in hushed whispers, shut up, _shut_ up, _shut up!_ The empty thud of the ball against the wooden floor and then… a silence worse than any noise you’ve ever heard.

_“No one would ever want to play with you.”_

Your hands shake too much now, from regret but mostly from fear. You don’t make those sets to anyone anymore. Until this fiery ball good intentions and bruised knuckles and way too bright smiles comes bulldozing into your life, that is.

“I’m here,” he says, so nonchalantly and with that billion-megawatt smile of his that you almost don’t get it at first.

The idiot hits the ball with his eyes closed and you’re appalled because how can somebody possibly trust someone else that much? You know you wouldn’t, least of all yourself, and when you ask him how he does it, he looks at you with this incredulous look, as if you asked him something like why the sun rose or why the sky is blue. “It’s the only way I know how.”

For the first time in your life, _you’re_ having to run to keep up with someone else. You take a deep, shuddering breath and realize with growing horror in the pit of your stomach that it feels _good._

"With me around, you're the greatest," you tell him, and it's _true_. As long as you're around, he's undefeatable. So, you tell him that and you don't think too much about how much truth there is in the vice versa too.

On the court, you stand by his side, demon and demon, and you win. You win wherever it matters and you keep winning… until you don't.

The first time you see him cry, you're barely keeping your own tears at bay, washing your face with water in hopes you can camouflage them.

There are rusty pins lodged in your throat. "I'm sorry. Oikawa read me like a book."

Before you know it, he's on top of you, pushing you back into the ground with more force than his body should allow.

"Don't you dare make it sound like sending the ball to me was a mistake!"

You're on your back, lying in the grass, his hands gripping your collar so ferociously that his knuckles turn white. The tears drop from his eyes and land on your face, and when you finally look up at him, you forget how to breathe. Once more, you retract what you thought earlier.

This boy is not a bird either. No bird would ever be able to survive the fire you’re seeing right now in his eyes. He’s crying and he’s burning up and his hands seem to leave imprints upon your skin and there’s just one thing that his paradoxically tear-filled yet fiery eyes seem to say. _I’m going to win. I’m going to win and defeat you too, so don’t you give up on me yet. And don’t you dare lose to those guys first!_

No, this boy is no bird. He’s closer to an exploding supernova, blinding everyone and everything in its path. Burning, burning, burning out, and then burning even brighter. The sun itself. 

You clench your teeth, a strange mix of pride and wonder and disgust and anger coursing through your veins. Like hell you’re going to let him leave you behind.

You want to strangle him sometimes, maybe all of the time, because he just makes you _so angry_ that you don’t know what to do with it. You hate everything about him, you hate the way he’s always smiling, the way he always has just enough left in him to get back up for the hundredth damn time in a day, the way you can’t seem to scare him like you scare everybody else. Or maybe you hate how relieved all of this makes you. The sheer hunger for victory that drives him terrifies you sometimes, that insane _want_ to do the impossible and laugh in the face of natural order. 

You hate everything about him and yet you cannot push down the familiar swell of pride you feel in your chest whenever he jumps, obscuring the sun from the sky and leaves them all gaping in his wake. It doesn’t make sense but you can’t help it, the intrinsic pride.

It doesn’t take long for the two of you to become an urban legend of sorts. The freak quick duo. A pair of monsters. A demon and a demon. You don’t mind the nicknames, not really. If anything, you think there’s a certain ring to them. And so, the two of you continue to conquer mountain after mountain, and you try your best to ignore the foreboding voice in the back of your head that keeps screaming about how fragile this Atlantis you’ve built actually is.

It's only when he falls from the sky, screaming in agony as the white-hot wax of his wings scalds the bare skin of his back, that you realize that Hinata Shouyou is not, in fact, invincible. Funny how something as simple as that had managed to slip your mind entirely.

You had been so drunk on the euphoria of setting to him, of seeing him jump and bringing it home that you forgot that at the end of the day, he’s only human, as are you.

For the third time, you take back what you thought about him. Hinata Shouyou is not the sun either. He’s Icarus who jumped too high and tried too hard and flew too close to the sun and now he’s falling.

You can’t catch him, it’s too late for that. Instead, you wrack your mind for the most hurtful, most _cruel_ thing you can possibly find and with metal spikes lodged in the back of your throat, you say to him, “Once again today, I win." _I’m going on ahead._

What you actually want to say is _I want you to follow me,_ but even if the words hadn’t died in your throat, he’s too far gone for them to reach him now. The look on his face would haunt your sleep for years to come.

Nothing is the same after that. He leaves and you know you’re more than just one half of a pair but you can’t help but feel like you’re missing something. It’s a terribly hollow feeling but you would rather eat glass than admit that out loud, so you bury it in victory after victory after victory, each more unsatisfying than the last. 

The first time you come face to face with him in seven years, you don’t know what to say to him. He looks different, somehow, _better_. He’s taller too, not by much, but it’s something. But it’s his eyes that take you by surprise the most. The fire that always burned in them is still there, brighter than ever of course, but the volatility is gone. 

Once more, you change your conceptions. He might have been Icarus at one point, but he isn't anymore. From the unadulterated, uncontrollable mess of a forest fire that he used to be, there emerged something even more breathtaking. A phoenix rising from the ashes.

He took every piece of melting wax, every broken feather, every bruise and every tear and every scream, and from it, he built himself a throne sturdier than any before.

And when he smiles at you, everything you had been freezing and silencing and forcing down inside of yourself for the past seven years comes tumbling out. To your own surprise, you don’t even have to make an effort to smile back.

You have never felt more _free_ in your entire life than you do when you play against him. It doesn't even matter when you lose. Seeing him as he is now is the biggest victory you have ever felt. It tastes like pride and laughter and tears, both of sadness and joy. It tastes of early mornings and late nights and promises of a future you didn't even know you could have.

 _With me around, you’re the greatest,_ you had said, when what you should've said was _together, we're insurmountable._

He had always jumped believing that the ball would come to him just right and it _did_ , it always did. It only took you about nine years to notice how it worked the other way around too. You would toss the ball believing that he’d come, and he _does_ , he always does, without fail. Even if his lungs are burning, even if his legs are giving out, even if everything is going dark.

In all these years, Hinata Shouyou has never once failed you.

"I'm here," he says, and you believe him because he has never given you a reason not to.

Deep breaths.

_Once more, let's take on the world together._

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please consider leaving a comment! Come scream at me about Haikyuu on [Tumblr](https://www.lawliette.tumblr.com) and [Twitter.](https://www.twitter.com/cylencia)


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